


Painful Assumptions

by LittleLadyBigDreamer



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Librariansshipathon, The Boys still have their issues, jazekiel - Freeform, mild violence, no graphic descriptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 13:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLadyBigDreamer/pseuds/LittleLadyBigDreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jake is left to clear up a mess in the Library alone, he assumes Ezekiel has simply bailed. The real reason behind the young Librarian's disappearance is far more alarming however, and while the team hurry to aid Ezekiel, Jake can't help feeling guilty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painful Assumptions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SnorkleShit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnorkleShit/gifts).



> So this stemmed from a conversation with SnorkleShit/Queerseth on Tumblr and I agreed to try and write the thing. So here it is. I've had a crazy week and each section was written on different days so if it's a little unflowy, forgive me. I'm also still finding my feet with some characters but I hope you like it. Ps. Sorry it's late - wifi issues.

"Is he in here?" Jake asked, entering the Annex from the Library.

"Who?" Flynn asked, furrowing his brows.

"Jones," he muttered in reply. "We were messin' around with the jet pack and kinda hit a few shelves. He's s'posed to be helpin' me sort it all out. He said he was comin' back after he got a soda. That was an hour ago. I've called him five times and left three messages!"

"You guys played with the jet pack?" Flynn's eyes grew as wide as his smile. "It's so cool isn't it?! I’ll never forget the first time I- Ow!" he rubbed the arm that had been smacked and frowned at the Guardian giving him a small glare.

"Don't encourage them," she said sternly before looking up at Jake. "He didn't mention going anywhere else?" she asked, concern evident in her voice.

"Nah," he shook his head. "I swear to god if he's hidin' somewhere on his damn phone-"

"No I don't think so," Cassandra piped up. "I sent him a message fifteen minutes ago and he hasn't replied."

"Maybe he's just ignoring it," Flynn unhelpfully supposed, earning another smack from Eve. "Ow! Stop doing that," he frowned at her before turning back to Cassandra and adding, "or maybe he just hasn't seen it."

"But he always replies to my messages, like straight away," she told them. "I don't like this you guys. Something's not right."

Eve slid her own phone out of her back pocket and tapped the screen a few times before holding the device to her ear. "Nothing," she shook her head. "Didn't even go to answer phone. I'm with Cassandra, this isn't right." She pressed the screen of her phone a few more times before looking back up at them. "Okay, he's near the pizza joint two blocks away," she told them, relief seeming to wash over her. "Tracker," she added, noting Cassandra's questioning look

"Dammit Jones," Jake muttered, fists clenching.

"But it still doesn't make sense," Cassandra wondered out loud, "Why wouldn't he answer his phone?"

"He's got pizza," Jake replied angrily, "who are we against that?"

"No, wait," Eve held up a finger, suddenly looking worried as she squinted at her phone once more. "He's moving, fast...very fast for someone on foot."

"Oh he did not," Jake's voice got a little louder as both his and Eve's eyes grew wider. "Tell me he didn't take one of our cars?!" 

 

Both Eve and Jake rushed outside, both stopped and gave relieved sighs when they spotted Eve's car and Jake's truck in the spots they left them in. "Oh thank god," Jake breathed. "Okay I feel a little better."

"I don't," Eve confessed, her voice full of concern once more. "He doesn't have a car, he doesn't have _our_ cars, how is he moving so fast?"

"Unless he's not driving?" Flynn offered, him and Cassandra having joined the other two. 

"Maybe he got a cab," Jake shrugged. 

"To go two blocks away?" Eve questioned, raising her eyebrows. "He's not that lazy."

"He actually likes to walk around here," Cassandra spoke up. "He told me," she explained when she received three questioning looks. 

"Well maybe he wanted to go somewhere else after that," Jake supposed, even though he was starting to worry himself. 

"Look," said Eve, her logical mind clearly trying to make sense of everything. "We're not focusing enough on the main fact. What is the one thing Ezekiel Jones is never without?"

"His phone," Jake and Cassandra said together. 

"Hoodie," Flynn nodded confidently, earning himself three perplexed frowns. "Phone, I meant phone," he corrected himself. 

"Anyway," Eve shook her head. "Exactly. He's never more than a couple inches away from his phone, he always answers it, replies to messages straight away and if he's on one of his own jobs he turns his location off so I don't know where he is."

"Wait, he knows you track him?" Cassandra asked.

Eve nodded. "Yeah, I think he does it to stop me worrying, which I don't, or to make sure I know where to come find him if he gets into trouble, which I do."

"So he's not on his own _job_?" Jake inquired, using finger quotes on the last word. 

"I don't think so," Eve shook her head. She drew her attention back to her phone once the little red dot on her phone began hastily moving again. "Oh that's not good."

"What?" Flynn peered over at her phone trying to see what her sudden panic was about. "Uh oh. That is _not_  a good part of town, how did they even get there so quickly?"

"They?" Cassandra squeaked, now more worried than ever. 

"What part of town?" Jake asked simultaneously.

"That scrappy part just past Downtown, the part the O'Reilly brothers basically own," Eve answered.

"Shit," Jake muttered. 

"Yeah, exactly."

"Who are the O'Reilly brothers?" Cassandra asked. 

"Irish mob," Jake replied, looking away when her eyes widened in horror. "You think he's involved with them?"

"What?" Eve exclaimed. "No. I think it's very weird that he seems to be in a car in that part of town, almost completely off the radar. But I dunno, maybe he's just there by coincidence. Cassandra, you know him best, is there anywhere around there you think he'd go? Does he know anyone around there?"

"No," she shook her head. "I don't think so."

"So he's definitely not there for pleasure," Flynn said, "or business."

"Not his own business anyway," Eve's frown grew ever deeper. "Okay! Jake, you take your car, I'll take mine, Cassandra you keep your phone on you, Flynn will call you to keep you updated on where his tracker goes," she instructed, rapidly heading back to the main room to grab her car keys, the rest  following behind in suit. "Hopefully we can get to him before..."

"Before what?" Cassandra locked eyes with her as she spoke, stopping the Colonel in her tracks. 

"Nothing," Eve tried to give her a small smile. "We'll get to him," she reassured the redhead, while Jake looked on, already feeling guilty that he'd let Ezekiel go missing for this long. 

* * *

"Okay go right," Flynn instructed Eve, following the path highlighted by the still moving dot on her phone with Ezekiel's name hovering over it. "Just carry on down here...uh okay they've just taken the sec- no third left."

"You guys getting this?" Eve called into Flynn's phone which was in his other hand.

"Yeah," Cassandra answered. "We're taking the street parallel so we'll get them at the other side. Why are they taking so long? Where are they going?"

"In a really really not good part of the not good part of town," Flynn muttered, apologising when Eve glared at him. "There they are!" he gestured to the black four by four ahead. "Wait, wait, hold back a bit, they're slowing down." Eve hit the brakes with a little more force than she intended to, causing both herself and Flynn to jerk forward as the car came to a slow crawl. 

"I don't get it," they heard Cassie say on speakerphone, "why are they just slowing down and not stopping?"

Eve was about to reply with an honest 'i don't know,' when one of the rear doors of the car opened and something came flying out of the vehicle. "Oh my god! Shit!" she yelled, recognising the object instantly. Within seconds she was out of the car and halfway down the street, the car and its passengers no longer her main concern. 

"What? What is it?" Cassandra cried down the phone.

"What happened? Baird?" came Jake's voice. 

"I dunno," Flynn answered, mimicking Eve's movements and following her down the street. 

"Ezekiel!" Eve practically screamed as she approached the body laying on the pavement. "Ezekiel, can you hear me? Talk to me. Ezekiel it's me, Eve," she lifted the hair from his face, trying not to wince at the blood oozing from several areas on his face. "Oh god." 

"Woah," Flynn said as he came to a halt beside the two of them, Jake and Cassandra now standing behind him, both having run from the car at Eve's screaming. 

"Oh my god," Cassandra whispered, her voice cracking already. Jake simply stayed quiet, staring at the figure sprawled out on the floor before them. 

"Baird?" Ezekiel barely mumbled. 

"Yeah, hey buddy, it's me," Eve tried to smile at him. There was blood all over his face, his hair was unusually dishevelled and there seemed to be bruises forming in several places over the visible parts of his body, Eve assumed there would be more elsewhere.

"Don't feel good," he staggered out a reply, breathing heavily as he did. 

"Yeah I'm kinda not surprised," she said, glancing over his whole body again. "Where does it hurt the most?"

"Stomach," he strained as he turned on his back, eyes flickering as he struggled to find the energy to keep them open.

"Okay." Eve lifted up his shirt a little to see how bad the damage was, wincing again when he groaned and upon seeing his injuries. To an untrained eye he might look like he had a perfectly normal abdomen, a few marks here and there but nothing particularly concerning. For Eve though, who had seen such injuries way more than she would have liked to, it was more than concerning, more than that, it was heart-breaking. She could see there were numerous areas that would be covered by serious purple bruises by morning, along with several small cuts, small but enough to cause disruptive pain. Pulling his shirt back down, Eve placed a hand over his and smiled down at him. "Let's get you home," she said softly. 

* * *

Thirty minutes later they were all back in the Annex, Flynn and Eve propping up Ezekiel before setting him down on the couch, the young Librarian wincing with every move. Jake and Cassandra followed them in a minute later, Cassie eagerly rushing to sit beside Ezekiel, while Jenkins entered the room with a first aid kit and pot of tea, the former of which he handed straight to Eve. Jake hovered by the door, hands in his pockets as he watched the others fuss over the injured young man. 

"What happened?" Eve was the first to ask the question on all their minds. 

"O'Reilly's," Ezekiel croaked, wincing even more as Eve began dabbing at his bloody wounds. 

"Yeah we got that much," the Guardian remarked. "We were looking for specifics."

"It was nothing," he insisted. Everyone in the room gave him an incredulous look. "Fine," he groaned. "I was supposed to be helping Jake tidy the Library but I was thirsty, we didn't have any soda so I quickly went out to get some but I thought I might as well grab a bite for us while I was out. When I was walking back I saw the O'Reilly's doing some dodgy deal down a back alley, I didn't mean to, I just did. But they saw me too. They chased me and I almost got away but one of their guys was waiting down another street, he grabbed me and punched me in the stomach for good measure. They shoved me in the car and just kept saying they were going to 'deal with me' but I managed to make out that I was a wimp who was too scared to snitch. I guess they just decided I wasn't worth their time if I was a weedy fraidy cat," he shrugged. "But they beat the crap out of me beforehand just to make sure. I didn't even get to eat my pizza."

"Oh Ezekiel," Eve sighed in sympathy as Cassandra placed a hand on his arm, both girls giving him pitiful looks. 

"I'm fine," he assured them. "Just a little sore."

"That means you're not fine," Flynn commented. 

"Says the guy who got stabbed and still insisted on flying all the way to London for work," Ezekiel retorted.

"Uh yeah, where I got saved," Flynn shot back, the pair picking up their constant bickering once again. 

"Can you two give it a rest, just for today?" Eve gave both of them a stern look, though she didn't mind too much, them arguing meant Ezekiel was a little better than his bruises suggested. " _You_ need to take some medicine," she added pointedly to Ezekiel. 

"Ugh! No!" he whined. "I'm Ezekiel Jones, I don't need painkillers- OW!" He frowned hard at Eve when she poked his stomach. "What the hell?!"

"See, you need painkillers," she said firmly. 

"And soup. He needs soup," Cassandra added.

"Yes!" Eve nodded before looking back at Ezekiel and tipping her head to one side. "I forget how small you are," she said quietly, and Ezekiel could tell that joking aside, she really meant it; he was back to being their little brother. "And cute," she said with a final nod before standing up and turning to Jenkins. "Jenkins! How do we make soup?"

Jenkins opened his mouth to give an answer but simply closed it again, apparently deciding that showing them rather than telling them would be far less frustrating. "Come along," he gestured to Eve and Cassandra who had also stood up, wanting to tend to her wounded friend too. 

"I'm glad you're home," she gave Ezekiel a small smile and a peck on the cheek before following Eve and Jenkins to the kitchen. 

Flynn, who'd been watching the exchange between Eve and Ezekiel intently, frowned as she walked away. "Wait- Eve. I'm cute too, remember?" he called, suddenly aware of how neglected he was feeling now he wasn't the centre of her attention. 

 

"You know you don't have to stand there looking like someone just killed your cat," Ezekiel cut into the silence once he and Jake were left alone. 

"What? I'm not," Jake tried to brush off the comment. "I just feel bad for ya, that you got hurt."

"Well don't. I'm fine. You can stop feeling guilty too," he added bitterly. "I got your voicemails," he added causing Jake's face to fall. "One question: does your Momma know you talk like that?"

"Hey you don't say nothin' about her," Jake said angrily, finally moving from his position against the doorframe and taking a few steps toward Ezekiel who he couldn't help notice flinched. "Sorry," he muttered, calming himself. "I'm sorry. About what happened, about the messages. I was just angry, I thought you'd bailed."

"Again," Ezekiel finished his sentence. "You thought I'd bailed again. Right? 'Cause I mean that's all I know how to do isn't it?"

"No that's not what I-"

"It's alright. I get it. I mean I am Ezekiel Jones, master runaway, thief, unreliable, ready to drop you all in it and save myself any time right?"

"Jones-"

"Nah honestly. It's fine," Ezekiel insisted, stifling a shout as he painfully stood up. "I mean I thought we'd got past all that, especially after the whole me sacrificing myself for you guys but no I get it. I just thought you'd see I'm not just a loner thief, I thought out of anyone you'd know not to take people at face value," he said before he left the room, for the first time appearing genuinely hurt.

* * *

Jake knocked on the door of Ezekiel's room in the Annex a few hours later, hoping his fellow Librarian would be awake. Eve had given him some strong painkillers and strict orders to stay in his room with no devices that had bright screens, and no that did not mean he could use his phone if the brightness was turned down. She'd given him a glare when he'd muttered something about being cut off from the outside world. That said, he'd done as he was told and had hopefully gotten a little bit of sleep. 

"Come in," came the sound of Ezekiel's groggy voice through the door. 

Jake opened the door and once again hovered by the frame. "Hey," he said with a small smile. "Baird said it's time for your next round of meds."

"Ugh, is she kidding? Those things knock me out more than the O'Reilly's did," he joked, but Jake could tell his smile faltered a little at the memory of the thugs. "You can just leave them on the side. I'll take them in a minute. She can even come and check if she wants," he added when Jake didn't move.

"I uh, I got somethin' else too," the art historian muttered. Bringing his hidden arm into the room, he presented a large pizza box. Ezekiel's eyes grew wide and he sat up immediately, momentarily forgetting about his injuries and consequently crying out in pain. "Woah dude," Jake was by his side in a flash, trying to help him as he coughed violently while clutching his stomach. Placing the pizza box on the bed, Jake reached out for the glass of water on the nightstand, offering it to Ezekiel who shook his head in refusal. "Will you just take it man," Jake cried, not wavering from his position.

Reluctantly, Ezekiel took the glass and took a few sips of water. "Thanks," he said a second later, his voice hoarse from sleep and his coughing fit.

"No problem."

"So uh, is that mine?" Ezekiel nodded to the box.

"Yeah, well, the rest of the guys have theirs, I thought we could split this one," Jake suggested.

"This is you waving a white flag and saying sorry," Jones stated matter of factly. Jake shrugged. "Anyway, maybe I don't want it," he turned his nose up the gift.

"Yeah, right, Jones. Its double cheese extra pep. You know it is, your pizza Spidey senses are probably going crazy right now," Jake tried to laugh. 

"How do I know it's not poisoned?"

"Jones."

"What? You don't like me cowboy, you made that clear with all the screaming down the phone, which by the way wasn't just rude but was presumptuous and an arse move," he ranted to the art historian.

"I know. That's why I want to apologise, really apologise. I shouldn't have assumed you'd just left. My first thought was 'well he's a thief, he's out for himself'," Jake confessed, leaving Ezekiel a little stung. "But I shouldn't have 'cause I know you better than that. You're my co-worker and my friend first of all, and if it had been any of the rest of them I would've been concerned. I should've done the same with you and because I didn't..."

"I got treated like a punch bag," Ezekiel completed the sentence.

"Yeah," Jake looked away as he replied. "I just- you guys know I have trust issues-"

"Ha! Yeah, don't worry we do. I think Cass is still reeling from the things you said to her. You know you really have a problem cowboy."

"Wait, Cassie's still mad at me?" Jake asked suddenly.

"You basically called her a traitor," Ezekiel pointed out. "I'd be pretty pissed if I was her too. In fact I am, I'm still pissed about this and I intend to be for a while. But...right now this pizza's getting cold and I'm hungry."

"So we're okay?" Jake asked hopefully.

"No. I'm _hungry_ ," Ezekiel repeated as though Jake hadn't heard him the first time. "But look, I _am_  a thief, I've never been ashamed of that. I've kept myself to myself and looked out for myself all these years because that's how I survived. So I get why you thought I ran off...I mean technically I did but I was planning on coming back, but it just would've been nice if your first thought was one of concern. Don't just sell me short."

Jake nodded in understanding. "Got it. Sorry," Jake said again.

"Oh my god and stop saying that! You sound like Flynn when he's made Baird mad and she eventually has to kiss him to shut him up which I swear to god if you do I _will_  hurt you despite my current predicament," he warned. 

"Got that too," Jake gave another laugh. "So..?" He held his fist up, looking at Ezekiel hopefully. The younger man rolled his eyes then bumped Jake's fist in resolution of their argument. 

"So do I really have to share this with you?" Ezekiel asked, reaching over to pull the pizza towards him. 

"Uh yeah," Jake replied. 

"Okay but I don't share pizza," he said, tugging it closer to himself.

"No, Jones, they ate theirs already and I'm hungry," Jake tried to reach for the box.

"Mmm, this is good. This is heaven," Ezekiel mumbled as he bit into the cheesy slice.

"Jones, what are you- gimme some!" Jake frowned as Ezekiel swatted his hand away. "Jones!" 

 

Outside, peeking through the small gap in the door, Eve smiled to herself. They weren't best friends, they never would be, but for now her boys were back on what were good terms for them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Anything and everything is appreciated :) x


End file.
